a gun is a hole you can carry around
by callmesandy
Summary: 3 people Kensi told about running away. (None of whom were Hetty.) Warnings for: mental health, witnessed sexual assault, sexual harassment. (Kensi/Deeks)


title, opening & closing quote from franklin bruno's song 'tired of the west.' thanks to j for beta. no profit garnered.

_a house is a hole you can build above ground_

The way Kensi told Jack, she was laughing, like, can you imagine? Teenagers, you know? Even though she'd been nineteen when she met Jack and only four years removed from the whole runaway on the streets thing. Just a thing, she said. She was twenty when she told him, and he'd proposed, and she was so beyond her adolescent idiocy.

xxxx

To begin with, she said, she'd been telling everyone since she was 13 that her mother was dead. She had maybe even said it in front of her father, who knew different, but he didn't contradict her. She took it as approval.

"So, she's not dead," Nate said.

"No," Kensi said, stopping herself from adding 'technically.'

"Do you think he was right to do that?"

She looked up because she wanted to cry and if you looked up, you probably wouldn't. She hated talking to Nate.

yyyy

She yelled at her father, and didn't do what he told her to do, and then he died. He died in a way that made no sense at all. She knew it wasn't her fault but it was her fault. She'd caused it somehow. That was her thinking at the time.

The Gardners were an older couple who had watched her sometimes when her dad was away. They came by after the MPs and told her she was going to be staying with them. So, she realized, somehow she'd gotten away with her lie about her mother. She'd wondered for a moment if her mother was dead by now, after Kensi had said it so many times. Maybe she had two bodies on her conscience.

After a week she thought her heart had to be broken, like, physically not working. She felt like she was hyperventilating every minute and somehow she could never stop. It seemed fundamentally impossible that she was supposed to stay in this other house with all her things and still function. She packed a bag. She packed a smaller bag like her father had shown her, one she could wear at all times and in that bag she put a loaded gun and a knife.

She knew a guy who had these friends, one of them had this townhouse where he let people crash. She showed up and the townhouse guy said, "I gotta charge, like, let's say $5 a night."

She nodded and found a place to put her bag down. It made more sense to Kensi to be in a place like that than in someone's home.

xxxx

Kensi asked Nate, "Are you going to make a whole thing out of how my house is a mess and my months of living out of a bag at a formative age?"

Nate looked skeptical. "Do you think there's a connection?"

"No," she said. "I prioritize. Keeping things neat like other people want is not that important to me."

"That makes more sense to me," Nate said.

yyyy

Another girl recommended Kensi get a job. "Under the table shit," she said. Kensi went with the girl that night to a strip club. "Don't freak," the girl said. "It's dishwashing." Basically, the actual kitchen staff paid kids in cash to do their jobs while they watched the girls stripping. The other girl joked they were working girls, too. Kensi smiled and went back to scrubbing.

Kensi never knew the girl's name. She gave Kensi cigarettes, taught her to smoke, showed up for a few more days at the townhouse and the strip club, waved a menthol in Kensi's face during one of their breaks and told Kensi, "girl, you are straight up having a nervous breakdown." Then the girl didn't come back one day. It was the closest Kensi came to making a friend for all of the ten months she was a runaway.

Mr. Gardner came by the townhouse one morning, three weeks after Kensi had run away. The townhouse owner blew him off. Then he told Kensi she had to leave, but he had a friend. Kensi nodded and went there.

xxxx

"I figured, you know, since they hadn't found me, they gave up. It was all very black and white to me. They looked because they had to, then they were over it," Kensi said to Nate. "So therefore I had nowhere to go. So I went, you know, wherever."

Nate said, "You know that isn't true now, right?"

"Of course," she said. She was 25, of course she knew that wasn't true.

zzzz

"1997," Kensi says. "Okay, you know, after my dad died, there was this time …"

"I know," Deeks says. "Hetty told me."

She sits up. "I never told Hetty. In my life, I've told three people and none of them were Hetty. Ugh, do you think Nate told her? He wouldn't."

"He actually wouldn't," Deeks says. "I mean, it's Hetty, are you really wondering if she knew this deep dark secret of yours?"

"So," he says. "1997. You're on the streets." His voice is gentle. "I was in my shiny cop uniform, walking my beat."

"You would have saved me," she says, laughing.

"I would have talked to you," he says. That's the game, what if they had met before. They started with 2008 and 1997 is the last year they're doing, because after that, Deeks and Kensi agree, it's creepy. Not cute romantic, but straight on creepy.

"Just what I needed, another guy hitting on me." She stares up at the ceiling. "I had this job, washing dishes at a strip club under the table. The first place I worked, after six weeks, the actual dishwasher brings some 'friends' back into the kitchen. Because my t-shirt would get wet, you know, all the steam. And I knew what he was doing the minute those assholes showed up and I was thinking, I have a gun."

"Of course you did," Deeks says.

"And a knife," she says. "But I thought, if I do something, I'll get arrested and I was very scared of juvie. I thought no one wanted me." She says it casually, after all the practice talking to Nate. Deeks plays with her hair in a way that says he will always always want her.

She says, "So after his so-called friends left, I told him he had to give me half of what they paid. And I showed him my knife. And he said, fine, and gave me $25, and I never went back there. I started dishwashing at this other strip club. And I was always hunched over, you know, hiding." Back then, she was always amazed she made it to the next minute mostly intact. For ten months. She didn't draw strength from her continued survival. She just felt worn down.

"I would not have hit on you," he says. He's very insistent, though he's still using his 'I love you, and you're kind of a mess' voice. "I had a girlfriend, by the way. She was an instructor at Santa Monica Community College and five years older than me."

"Yoga," she says. She rolls over so she is looking at him. He shakes his head. "Pilates." He shakes his head again.

"She taught Ballet," he says. "And Modern Dance. She was super hot and super flexible. Also, I stopped being attracted to traumatized teenage girls by the time I was in college."

"And moved on to wanting to save them, in your paternalistic way," she says.

He laughs. "Adorable way, that's what you meant to say. I would have talked to you in a non-hitting on you way and explained that there are a lot of resources for teenage runaways."

"In Los Angeles," she says.

yyyy

She'd sleep during the day, usually on the couch at someone's place. She slept badly, waking up at every noise, curled tight around her small bag. She never felt rested. She had a tightness between her shoulders that felt like it had been built into her bones when her father died.

When she was up, she'd try to shower or at least wash her face. She'd prop the door if there was a bathroom and running water, and leave whatever kind of curtain or door there was half open so she wouldn't be surprised. No one ever tried to break in, but one time she found a peephole after she'd finished her shower. She filled it with wet toilet paper and found another place to stay the next morning.

She'd buy shitty junk food at a fast food restaurant or chips and soda at a drugstore. A pack of cigarettes every other day. She didn't get carded. She spent most of her time thinking about making sure she didn't get found and she didn't get attacked. She thought if she lived to 18, then she would be fine. She could get her ID and do whatever she want and she'd make her own way like she was already doing, only easier.

She'd go to the strip club and wash dishes, try not to be noticed, hoping she didn't get stiffed. She didn't want to beg or steal and she would not let anyone touch her. After work, she'd find some place to eat dinner, go back to wherever she was sleeping and start all over again.

Every two weeks she went to a laundromat and washed all her clothes. She got skinnier and skinnier but she still outgrew her bras. Puberty was being way too kind to her.

She didn't make friends, she didn't really know anyone. She went weeks without saying more than hi or bye or give me my money or here's my money to people.

Her favorite place to hang out was the library. She loved to go in and just sit in the kids section. She grab a book to read and settle in, try not to fall asleep. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, old books aimed at teens where everyone had parents, at least one, and no one ran away and no one died.

If she fell asleep, the librarians would wake her up and kick her out. Or worse, call the cops.

"Which is how I got caught," she told Jack. "Fell asleep at the library and when I woke up, there were these cops standing over me. And it turns out I was officially missing so, you know, they sent me back to the Gardners. And Sgt Gardner had been transferred, so we just told everyone I had been homeschooled. I was still a year behind. I'm always a year behind, but you know, back to school, back to everything."

"Good," he said. "That sounds really stupid. You must have made them so worried."

"Yeah," she said, "I was stupid. Don't worry, I would never do that to you."

A week before he left her, he said, "You running away, you know, that wasn't you being stupid. You were hurting."

It was the first time anyone had said that to her at that point in her life. She said, "Thank you."

yyyy

Shortly after she came to NCIS and specifically working for Mace, she killed someone in the line of duty for the first time. She had to meet with Nate.

"It's not the first time I've drawn a gun on someone," she said.

"Just the first time you killed them." He gave her that sneaky Nate smile she'd grow to loathe. And then like.

"I was 15 and I had run away from home, after my dad died. So technically not so much home. I couchsurfed for most of the time. People who'd let you crash. And I worked nights at this strip club washing dishes. One night I finish at 4 am, come back to the abandoned house where I'd been staying. And there's someone else in the room I had. I realized after a few minutes," she paused. It wasn't the easiest story to tell, even though she'd tried to make it sound more casual. She was usually really good at not talking about things but even then, Nate had his ways. "There was a guy and he was forcing himself on the girl." Like if she used a euphemism, it wasn't as bad.

"You must have been scared," Nate said.

"I was. I was. I had a gun, and I was worried because if I used it, maybe the cops would take me away and I didn't think there was anywhere to go besides jail. I was really scared of jail. But I was more, I was scared of not doing the right thing, like my father would be so disappointed. So I drew my gun, I fired at the floor and I screamed at him to get off her. Which he did. And I told him to pull up his pants and get out and not come back. And he was like, are you going to shoot me? And I was like, clearly I will. I think I said something about how my father was a war hero and I would clean up pretty in court so I wasn't that worried."

"But you were," Nate said.

"Petrified. But I didn't show it. And he scurried off. The girl, she was just, I don't know. In shock, I guess. Then she started going through his bag. We divided up his money, which he had a lot. And she kept all his weed, I didn't do drugs." She laughed.

Then Nate said she had to come back twice a week until further notice. She hated it.

zzzz

She tells Deeks she could have used his creepy paternalism. She tells him two months after she threatened the rapist, he showed up again. First when she went to this apartment to crash. He was standing outside in the hall. He looked at her and smirked. She turned around and wandered the streets until the library opened.

Kensi tells him that after that she couldn't find a place to stay. She blew through all the money she'd carefully saved staying at hourly hotels. She tells him that then she went to work and the rapist was there. She didn't even go inside. She lit a cigarette and walked away until she thought she was out of his view. Then she ran. She was nearly out of money. She slept on the street, except she mostly closed her eyes for twenty minutes and then startled awake at every passing car.

She tells him her plan, and laughs at the word, was to somehow get to Wilmington. She didn't know anyone there but maybe she could make it work. But then she went to the library and accidentally slept through closing time.

And she realized the school counselor at her new school was easily bullshitted. She hid everything. Until she told Jack. And then Nate, who was actually equipped to help.

Then, thank God, Deeks changes the subject to whether they'll learn "neat new positions" at couples yoga the next day. They're on their very first officially a couple vacation.

He falls asleep laughing. After all the talking, she can't sleep. The space between her shoulders hurts again. She looks over at Deeks, breathing deeply and evenly. She almost wakes him up to make him make her feel better. But she's slept next to him enough to know he has nightmares at least once a week, wakes up startled and staring. She asked him once if he remembered what woke him up and he said he didn't. She loves him so she didn't ask again. He likes games like what if we met before because he likes to rewrite history. He thinks that makes it better. Like he's changed his memories to the lies, and the better story is now what really happened.

He could be right, but Kensi sucks at it. She turns on her side and settles in tight against his back. She likes being the big spoon. She puts her arm around him. And even though his breathing is still deep and even, and he is still asleep, he covers her hand with his. Her back stops hurting and she falls asleep right away.

_A train is a godsend, that's all that I've learned  
now I'm tired of the west, I'm tired._


End file.
